$10,000 Game Making Contest

March 17, 2009

Zoo Games have launched an Indie games competition with a first prize consisting of $10,000 cash and a publishing deal for your game to be made for a ‘major console’. There is also $5,000 for the community favourite and $2,500 for the runner-up. Game Maker games are acceptable, but you must be over 18 to submit. The deadline for entries is April 15th.

Meanwhile on a far more negative note it would appear that TIA productions, who successfully held a Limited Graphics competition last year, have done a runner on their Gore competition which promised $115 of cash prizes. The competition ended on 26th February however, the perhaps aptly named, pure_evil020 has not been seen online after that date.

Hey guys,
Please take a look at the updated rules.
We have made it clear on many sites that our lawyers were a bit overprotective in the early draft.
We have since fixed everything according the feedback we received.
We cannot ripoff any ideas. Also if we wanted to do that, wouldn’t it be better for us to just secretly troll around on many sites since the games are playable anyways?
I know the company makes many casual games but thats the thing, me and a coworker came up with this idea since we saw them pass up a few high profile indie games.
We finally talked them into funding us to set up a community for indie games.
Many of you may not like the games appearing on “budget racks” but it will help spread the word and make you a nice chunk of change as well since we would be negotiating royalty deals.

We understand that we can’t make everyone happy but we did adjust the rules accordingly.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.
You cam email me directly at Tony@2beegames.com.

Thanks,
Tony

Also, we’re not that tiny little TIA company that may have jerked people to the tune of $115. This is a legitimate PUBLIC company. We’ll be at GDC in San Francisco if anyone is around.

Nice of you to mention that NAL. I had totally forgotten that this was the same comp as the one I saw on TIGSource. I don’t mind them getting the rights to make the game for console, but the part about making ripoff’s bugs me. I think I’ll pass.
-Elmernite

This competition was discussed on TIGSource. It’s actually very, very bad, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, a publishing deal is going completely against the entire concept of “indie development”. Indie developers do it because they can make what they want, when they want. With a publishing deal, you’ll be getting money, but you’ll almost certainly be restricted to what the publishers want to create. You’ll also get deadlines stuffed down your throat.

Secondly, one of the rules states that you’ll surrender some copyrights to the creators – they will be free to rip concepts/characters from all entries. The creator of the contest is Zoo Games – the games they’ve released so far have all been absolute shit (mostly budget Wii games with <30 on Metacritic. Releases include an official M&Ms game). I personally don’t want terrible ripoffs of my ideas sitting in the budget rack of my local supermarket.